


and his hands so cold they shake

by Sparrows



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, look just take it i'm sorry, more mindfuckery because apparently that goes with vax/rq like white on rice, no boners mentioned this time but they kiss again, weird temperature play i don't even know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-07
Updated: 2016-10-07
Packaged: 2018-08-20 01:26:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8231390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparrows/pseuds/Sparrows
Summary: Vax communes with the Raven Queen and finds comfort in the grave's chill.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title once again from Halsey's Coming Down, because apparently that's just what I listen to when writing this stuff? _"i found god / i found him in a lover / when his hair falls in his face / and his hands so cold they shake"_
> 
> (Featuring entirely too many synonyms for 'cold'.)

The Raven Queen's touch is cold.

He feels her hands on his shoulders, the chill hitting his skin despite the layers of armour and the feathered mantle wrapped around him. She lingers there a moment, letting the cold seep through him, and Vax closes his eyes. She is not there in the flesh; the feeling upon his skin is phantom sensation, perhaps detached from the physical but no less real because or despite it.

He lets out a shaking breath. White mist trails from his tongue and curls in the incense-scented air of the shrine. It feels like invitation. It feels like acceptance. His or hers, he cannot tell.

It takes him briefly by surprise when her hands move - or is it instead that his perception of them moves? - across his back, rather than his front as he expects. The chill shifts, moving over his shoulderblades and making the fine hairs at the nape of Vax's neck prickle. For a moment he feels the faintest pressure under his leathers, a pair of formless hands splaying fingers wide over his back. The ghost of nails scratch lightly at his skin.

"My lady," he murmurs, voice sounding loud in the otherwise silent crypt-turned-shrine. He does not follow it up with any further words; there is no need to, not when he feels her presence so keenly. It feels like tradition to address her like this, only like this, when she comes to him. He wets his lips. They cool quickly in the still air.

The Raven Queen's touch dips further south, coldness trailing across the muscles of his middle back before abruptly shifting, smoothing over his ribs. The sudden chill makes Vax's breath hitch, a strangled gasp choking out of him and his hands clenching, briefly, where they rest at his upper thighs.

He breaks tradition. "Please," he whispers into the quiet. He is not sure what he is asking for. He is never sure, with her, and yet what he receives is always, somehow, exactly what he needs. "Please," he repeats. "I need--"

The icy chill takes his entire back. The suddenness steals the breath from him once more, the pressure like a body pressing itself to his back, and he is certain he _feels_  it - the phantom sensation of a woman, of the Raven Queen, cold comfort along his spine. Vax arches briefly, involuntarily, as the cool feeling over his ribs reunites in the middle, hands lacing over his belly.

The Raven Queen's embrace is freezing, but it is welcome. Though his eyes are closed and he knows he is entirely alone in the crypt, she is there, her presence comforting despite that it saps the heat from his blood.

Her lips brush his ear. For a moment he cannot be sure if her breath is warm or cold, the two sensations warring in his mind. "My champion," she whispers, the title full of praise and - and full of _love_. "My dearest champion," she continues, a coldness like fingers trailing up the edge of his opposite ear making Vax tilt his head towards the sound of her voice, the prickling presence of it. She pauses a moment, like she is reconsidering, and then - "My _dearest_ ," she amends. He hears the curve of a smile in her voice, feels it against the shell of his ear. "You, who knows me best."

He feels so very cold, but her words spark something in him, a heat that flares inside his ribs, pride and affection swelling like a physical flame given fresh kindling. It is difficult, for a mortal to love a god, but his queen was mortal once and so this makes it easier. Easier to look within himself, to peel back the layers of himself until he finds it, there, nestled deep and safe; love, devotion, the knowledge that she looks upon him and sees an individual worthy of praise, and that he looks upon her and sees not the untouchable immortal goddess she has become but the red-eyed woman who looked at her predecessor's work and thought, "I could do better," and then _did_. It is inspiring.

Her lips trail from his ear to the exposed column of his throat. Each kiss leaves a blooming rose of ice behind, makes his breath shudder and spiral in soft clouds of white. The hands lacing over his belly roam upwards, the pressure at his back increasing ever so slightly as the Raven Queen's embrace grows closer. He feels bare beneath her touch, even as his senses remind him he is still fully clothed, and for a moment he feels a jab of relief that he locked the door behind him when he came in.

Her laughter is a sweet, gentle sound. Her lips linger against his skin, hands questing upwards and pressing, briefly, over the steady thrum of his heartbeat behind his ribs. Someday, he knows, that heart will cease to beat, and the Raven Queen will hold him in her arms for the last time. The thought troubles him less than it once did.

Vax's eyes open. The crypt lies empty around him, but out in the dark, beyond the candlelight and the low flare of lit incense, he sees them. Threads of gold, humming soundlessly, thousands of them criss-crossing out into the dark. "I want," he whispers, closing his eyes once more, and then his mind goes silent and numb; he wants _something_  but cannot name it, cannot put a voice to it.

A hand cups cold around the edge of his jaw, turning his head to the side. The feathers of his mantle tickle against his chin, the sensation overwhelming combined with the Raven Queen's touch, gentle as any lover's. Her lips press to his, more chaste than any kiss he has shared with her in dreams, again this clashing sensation of ice and fire flaring wherever her mouth touches him.

All at once the pressure vanishes, but the cold remains, chasing him like a shadow long after he leaves the crypt behind.

For the rest of the day, his breath comes as a frosty mist, and the phantom pressure of a single hand lingers between his shoulders.


End file.
